


Smoke Rings in the Dark

by ubiquitousness



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: One-Shot, substance use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-17
Updated: 2012-04-17
Packaged: 2017-11-03 20:30:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/385609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ubiquitousness/pseuds/ubiquitousness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The loneliness within me takes a heavy toll 'cause it burns as slow as whiskey through an empty aching soul, and the night is like a dagger, long and cold and sharp, as I sit here on the front steps blowing smoke rings in the dark." -Gary Allen</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smoke Rings in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter nor the Gary Allen song. 
> 
> A/N: So, I was listening to some country music and this song came up, and I thought this would be a good song to base a fanfic off of. So, please enjoy it.

Draco was sitting up in his bed after a rough night of fighting with the woman on his right. He was tired of fighting, but he just couldn't seem to do anything right when they were together. He would get home too late from work, he would make eggs the wrong way, and he would not tell a house elf thank you or any other thing that he didn't really think about while doing. To her, everything he did was wrong. He wanted to be right for once, but mostly he wanted to know that she loved him with all his heart. That she wanted to be with him even through all of the fighting that they seemed to do when they were together. They were supposed to be together, to end up together. He had fallen in love her in the worst time in his life, and with false hope he had thought that she could heal him from the empty soul his body held. He was utterly wrong, and he knew it. He knew he fell into a one sided love, but he desperately needed to win her heart. 

"Draco, I love you, but I am not in love with you," she said, with tears in her big brown eyes before walking towards their bedroom.

That was the moment when he realized that she too had tried to find the spark in their ongoing relationship. She had tried to love him with all of her heart, but it wasn't meant to be. As a tear failed his reasonable brain and slide down his face, he realized what he had to do. He was going to leave the women he loved, because she didn't love him. There was no love between them, only small hatred and empty hope for a life of happiness together. There was nothing there at all.

Draco got out of bed, and gathered a small bag that he began to fill with his things that he made smaller so it could all fit. He didn't need a light on to know where everything was, he knew it by heart. He didn't need a light on at all because it reminded him of how lonely he was in the world, even with another person within a five foot radius of where he stood. 

After losing his mother, Draco had been as close to dead as one could be without the Dementor's kiss. All he did was sit on a bench in a muggle park and smoke cigarettes all day and all night. He felt better when it was night because he didn't feel so alone and he loved the feeling he got as he saw the smoke rings he created with his mouth rise from his spot up high into the night sky until he couldn't see them anymore. It was the most comfort he had until she showed up. 

It was that first night, as she sat with him; not speaking a word, smoking her own that he realized that even throughout school, he had loved the insufferable woman. She was always there for him, and somehow, she had found him again. He was in a muggle park for Merlin's pants, and somehow she had found him. She didn't say a word, but she knew that was what he wanted. Peace in confront with another human. Peace and quiet. 

A week after the quiet, she had decided it was too quiet, so she struck up slight conversation. At first, he only gave one to three word answers because he was still dealing with the loss of his mother and all he wanted was the quiet. He enjoyed her company, but he wasn't always a patient person when it came to conversations between the two of them. It was rather annoying to Draco. But, the weeks past and he grew accustomed to simply sitting there and talking to her. He was slowly losing his shields around her, finally telling her all he had ever wanted to say to anyone.

"The war was something that could have been stopped, yet, the only person who thought to stop it was a boy who was clearly not aware of his own past until he became a part of the world he was forced out of. Funny, don't you think? He was forced out, forced it, and decided to save it from itself. The most selfless thing any person could do and he did it at seventeen years old," he said, babbling randomly between drags. 

"Are you jealous that he did all of this?" she asked him.

"Not jealous, so to speak. It would be nice to be recognized for the little things I have done, sure. But, I am more in his debt, rather than jealous. He saved not only a world, but the people in it, from something that was slowly eating and burning us alive. Are you not in his debt, too? Isn't the whole world, muggle and wizarding, in his debt?" he asked her, or more himself.

"We are in his debt, but it's not like you can go up to him and tell him that. He is too humble to believe that such a wide population owes them their lives," she explained, making the most sense out of a few words than Draco had ever heard. She was wonderful, and beautiful, and smart and could pull Draco from his thoughts with one touch.

"He is too humble for his own good," Draco muttered under his breath, though he was sure she had heard him.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"I saved him, my mother saved him. Even after everything we have done to him in the past, without those few times, he still could have put us away. Yet, being his humble self, he worked to help clear the charges on my family. His humble ways saved our lives yet again, and he isn't gloating to anyone about it. Gloating that he saved the famous Malfoy family more times than anyone could count. He has the right to gloat, yet he doesn't."

"Sometimes gloating gets you nowhere."

"Unless you get it to get you everywhere or anywhere."

"Where would you go if you were him and you gloated?" she asked, challenging his fighting thoughts.

He had to think. Where would he go? Away from everything he knew. To the past to stop it all before it got out of hand. To the past to apologize to Dumbledore, to Potter, to everyone he tormented, to his parents, to Voldemort, to the world. He could go anywhere he wanted, and yet he always knew where he would end up.

"Your arms," he said, quietly yet confidently.

Now all he wished was that he could go back in time and tell his self not to say those two words. They broke his heart now, knowing that he had only been hurt far more than he was when she tried to heal his exit wounds, those internal wounds that appeared when you lost someone, or your ability to forgive or forget everything you didn't want to remember anymore. Those wounds that just would not go away no matter how hard one tried. The tattoos on your broken soul that no money could erase. 

So there he was, sitting on that muggle bench, with his bag of items on his right, smoking a cigarette for the first time in three years. He sat there, knowing it was pointless to wish for her to be there, to stop him from watching the smoke rings in the dark, to stop him from wishing his mother was here to envelope him in her arms, to tell him everything was going to be okay. All he wanted was for her to love him back as much as he loved her. He knew it was pointless from the beginning, yet he still tried. He didn't even say goodbye when he left her, not wanting to wake her up from her dreamless sleep. He was too much of a gentle man for that. 

He charmed his bag into the size where it could fit in his pocket. He picked it up, placed it in a safe place and began walking nowhere. Taking a drag from his cigarette he relished in the feeling of the smoke feeling his lungs. Slowly, he blow out the smoke, watching at he created a ring that filled the direct air space in front of him. As he continued walking, he walked right through the smoke ring, knowing that it held more pieces of his broken heart than he cared to admit. He was leaving broken pieces of himself everywhere he walked as he finished the cigarette, noticing the slight rain drop hit his face here and there. As heavy rain drops filled the area, he thought back to a few hours before he left,

"Why don't you just go, Draco?" she had asked him.

"Because I can't just leave you here by yourself, it's not right."

"You can't be serious. How many times did you leave me before?"

"Too many," he muttered.

"So all of a sudden you care about me?"

"I have always cared. I was a fool before my mother died. I didn't know what I wanted," he explained to her.

"And you know now?"

"Yes," he admitted, moving towards her.

"Well what do you want?" she asked him.

"You. I want you," he said as a tear ran down his face.

"You can't have me, Draco. You don't deserve me. I don't deserve you. We don't deserve each other and you know it will never happen. Why can't you accept that?"

"Because I love you. I love you with all my heart, and I don't have to deserve you to have you. If anything, I deserve to die for everything I have done and I know that. Why can't you forgive me?"

"Because I don't love you. I mean, I love you, Draco. But, I am not in love with you."

Draco cursed as his cigarette was finished. He didn't care if he lived anymore, he didn't care about anything at all. Sitting down on the curb of the sidewalk, he took in his life. He took it all in, everything he had ever said, everyone he had ever hurt, anything he had hit, he had broke, he had cursed, he had killed, he had cried for, and had wished to forgive, to forget, to remember, to hurt. He took it all that was him and held it, in two tears that ran down his face and fell off of his chin with the rain drops that were falling hard around him. That was when it hit him, he didn't deserve anything. Not her, not happiness, he didn't even deserve sadness. So, why was he living? He didn't know. He knew that he didn't deserve to live. 

He shivered from the cold night breeze that fell upon him. The night was like a sharp dagger to his heart, long and cold. He only wished that had a dagger to stick in his heart. But, he didn't. So, got the courage to get up and continue on his endless journey through the quite unknown muggle town. He would pick another day and another way to die, but he knew that he didn't deserve to live. So, he would live with regret. Knowing that his love was not shared. No one loves him. He was a man, loving a certain kind of women who was not looking to love the kind of man he was. Pulling out another cigarette, he lit it, took the biggest drag his body to handle and blew out, watching the smoke rings float away into the dark rain sky.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I am not the happiest right now, I hope you can tell. A lot of things have happened in my life, so, Draco's life is sort of mine in a nut shell. I hope you enjoyed it though. If you cried, you are far more sappier than I am, that's for sure. Please review and tell me what you think. This was a one shot, so, no updates. Sorry. (: Smile, it wasn't real.


End file.
